I put the paper down. I picked it up again. I put it down.

S.

There is one woman whose name starts with S who has been in my life since I can remember. Sharon Keller.

My mother’s best friend. She came to every single birthday party I ever had. She babysat me every summer when my parents worked. She taught me how to braid my own hair. She cried at my wedding, I mean really cried, and I remember thinking at the time that it was a lot, even for someone who’d known me my whole life.

Sharon, who never had kids of her own. Sharon, who always brought me two gifts at Christmas when all my parents’ other friends brought one. Sharon, who my daughter calls “Aunt Sharon” even though she’s not my aunt. Whose last name starts with the same letter as my maiden name on the original birth certificate line.

I haven’t called her. I haven’t called my mom back either. It’s been three weeks. My husband knows. He keeps asking me what I want to do and I keep saying I don’t know because I genuinely don’t. Every memory I have of Sharon is reshaping itself in my head. The way she used to look at me. The way she’d hug me a beat too long. The time she said, out of nowhere when I was maybe sixteen, “You turned out so good, you know that?” and I thought it was just a nice thing to say.

I keep thinking about that hepatitis B shot. She couldn’t be my mom out loud. She couldn’t claim me, couldn’t raise me, couldn’t put her name on anything. But she could walk into that doctor’s office and say, “Please give her this vaccine.

Please keep her safe.” And that’s what she did. Quietly. Without anyone knowing.

I don’t know if I’m angry. I think I am, but I don’t know at who exactly. At my parents for not telling me. At Sharon for keeping it up this long. At myself for not seeing it, for never once asking why this woman without children spent every summer of her life taking care of someone else’s kid. Or maybe I’m not angry at all. Maybe I’m just sad. I’m sad that she was right there the whole time and nobody let either of us have that.

My daughter has her eyes. I looked at old photos last night and I can see it now. The same wide-set brown eyes, the same way they crinkle when she laughs. Forty-two years of looking at this woman and I never saw myself in her face. Now I can’t unsee it.